Madison Bars Professor From Lab

Submitted by Doug Lederman on May 12, 2010 - 3:00am

The University of Wisconsin at Madison has barred Gary Splitter, a tenured professor who studies an infectious disease, from his laboratory for five years because of unauthorized experiments with a potentially dangerous, drug-resistant germ, The Wisconsin State Journal[1]reported. Such punishments are extremely rare. Splitter said he had not been aware of the experiments, and that they were conducted by graduate students in his lab whom the university failed to train on safety issues. "The University of Wisconsin failed to provide the right education," Splitter said. "The bottom line is that this wasn't just an investigation of one individual. It was a major meltdown by the university."